Saturday

Feb 6, 2016 at 2:00 PM

As the corruption exposed by Hillary Clinton’s email crimes, and the use of the Clinton Crime Family Foundation to launder political shakedown money percolates, she might need a sex scandal from Bill to divert attention. The issue would be: Could Slick Willie still get excited enough to do such a thing if he had permission from his wife?

Hillary has done what she can to dissuade Obama from having his DOJ indict her. She penned an obsequious column, "What President Obama’s Legacy Means to Me," and then Obama then publicly applauded her. Her next missive will be, "What Loretta Lynch’s Legacy Means to Me."

Atlas Shrugged, the 1,168-page "door stopper" of a book by Ayn Rand, inspired many of us, and it foretells the crony politics of today. In hopes of getting you to read the book, and in order to explain the banality of Democratic class-envy rhetoric, I offer the following passage from Atlas Shrugged called "Francisco's Money Speech." A character in the book, entrepreneur Francisco d'Anconia, is confronted at a party by a liberal interloper who indignantly murmurs, "Money is the root of all evil."

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" d'Anconia replies.

"Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes... .

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery — that you must offer them values, not wounds — that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade — with reason, not force, as their final arbiter — it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability — and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. Is this what you consider evil?"

Ron Hart, a libertarian syndicated op-ed humorist, award-winning author and TV/radio commentator can be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com or visit www.RonaldHart.com.